


Time At Hand

by coldfiredragon



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Jane centric, Jane isn't afraid to try to change what she doesn't like, M/M, canon character death, fixed points and soul mates, implied polyamory, mostly implied pairings, queliot, time loops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-19 00:36:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11886213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldfiredragon/pseuds/coldfiredragon
Summary: Fillory is dying, and Jane Chatwin is determined to save it -- no matter the cost.





	Time At Hand

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is my entry for the current Welter's Challenge. The theme is 'Fillory'. Enjoy!!

Fillory is dying, and Jane Chatwin is determined to save it – no matter the cost. Each time she visits Fillory present she sees how it has faded. Each visit everything seems a shade darker. Fillory's people are a touch angrier. They are afraid. Jane is afraid too because she knows she's running out of time. 

It's almost laughable considering that she holds a watch which, with the twist of a few dials, can skip her backward and forwards across decades. She can see the Fillory of her past, and it makes the Fillory of her present that much dingier by comparison. Jane counts the years since Fillory has had a proper king. The Silver Age when the Chatwin children held the Thrones was a lifetime ago in Earth years. It's even longer by the Fillorian calendar. Jane knows that if Fillory is going to thrive again the world needs true rulers and she is determined to see the right people sit on the throne. 

It takes a few groups of hapless magicians before Jane comes face to face with Quentin Coldwater and Julia Wicker for the first, technically second, time. She recognizes them immediately, and wonders for a moment why they hadn't aged from when she was a child. Jane thinks back to when she had dubbed them the Magician and the Fool and told the story of how they had rescued her to Christopher Plover. She uses the watch to hop backward in time just to be sure, and yes, the ones who save her are Quentin and Julia. They are part of her story – somehow. The trick will be manipulating the present, so it lines up correctly with the past.

The first time they and their friends die, Jane, believes she must have been wrong about them, but the details of her childhood encounter continue to nag at her subconscious. It prompts her to do something she has never done before. She rewinds time just a little, to see if she can use the same group to get a different result. They die again, but Jane has become a woman possessed. These people fit into her story, and she is set on jamming the puzzle pieces this way then that until she makes them form the right picture. 

She is ready to give up on them after a few failed attempts, but then the first puzzle piece fits into place. Jane realizes that Eliot is meant to be a Fillorian High King. The puzzle becomes a map, a map that begins with Brakebills and ends with Eliot taking the throne. She becomes convinced that he'll be the one to lead Fillory from its dark age. She just has to find a path that leads to her brother's death in the process. 

All of it is easier said than done. Martin is getting smarter. He realizes that as long as she holds the watch, this same group of individuals will keep coming for him. Trying to predict his actions each loop is exhausting, but Jane feels she has to try to stay one step ahead of him if she's ever going to save Fillory. For several loops, she makes thwarting his every move her primary focus. She pays only enough attention to her group of Magicians to nudge them along the right path when they need it or when they start to get lost. She doesn't have time to meddle in their personal lives. Jane doesn't care what relationships they form as long as Eliot is guided to the throne. 

It takes her more loops than it should to realize that the Fillorians she tries so hard to save aren't going to accept a high king as dedicated to his secondary king as thoroughly as Eliot is to Quentin. It's a sad realization because the two young men balance each other. They temper the worst in each other and pulling them apart when they are so deeply bound to one another is the most difficult thing Jane has decided to do since she settled on this group of magicians as her end game. 

Each loop becomes focused on finding a new way to pull apart an intricately braided rope that is determined to rework itself as soon as she finished unraveling it. Jane starts to wonder if the idea of a 'fixed point' is more than just a concept from a sci-fi television show. She begins to wonder if soul mates are real. It seems that no matter what she does Eliot and Quentin find a way back to one another. 

The two of them falling into bed together becomes an event she both expects and dreads because it reaps havoc on the larger group dynamic. There is a loop that she starts over out of pure frustration as soon as it happens – and her impulsiveness nearly costs her the only ally she has in her quest. Henry is furious beyond measure. So much so that he shifts the wards on campus to deny her access. 

It brings her to tears because he doesn't understand what's at stake. He doesn't understand that Fillory is dying, and that magic will die with it. Jane spends the whole loop cut off from everything she has hoped to build. She only meets Quentin and his friends when Henry guides them towards Fillory. Jane sees immediately that Quentin and Eliot are inseparable without her intervention, so much so that Eliot refuses to take the throne at all if it means giving up on his partner. 

It forces Jane to take a desperate gamble. She winds her watch backward until she fears that its springs will burst and goes back in time, to a point where Fillory is an idea more than an actual place. When she returns to the present, there is a small loophole for the royalty, one that allows for a second marriage. The change, however, has driven Fillory even closer to chaos. She learns the hard way that being allowed to marry more than once leads to jealousy and hurt feelings, and then onward to even more violent urges. The history of Fillory, which Jane had once known like the back of her hand has been rewritten. She vows never to use the watch to reach so far into the past again. 

To her dismay, she is still barred from Brakebills as the new loop begins. She meets Quentin once, long enough to set he and Julia on their path to new lives, then she goes back to Fillory to learn what changes her foolish meddling with time have brought. The loop ends in Quentin's death just as every other has and Henry finally takes pity on her and allows her more control. Jane isn't stupid enough to test his good will a second time. When Quentin ruins the relationship, she tries to build for him with Penny by kissing Eliot for the first time Jane lets it slide. It seems that the two of them are destined to be together one way or another no matter what she does. 

They are together when the group arrives in Fillory, and Jane does her best to guide Eliot to the throne. The first test of Fillorian royal polyamory goes about as she expects. The girl she has chosen, a young woman named Fen, clashes with Quentin at every turn and Martin works his way into the cracks with ease. Upon their deaths, Jane walks through her forest of clock trees and watches one wither before her eyes. Fillory is dying. 

The fortieth loop is a disaster from the first week. Jane nearly loses Henry for real when her attempt to push Quentin, Alice, Kady, and Penny together all at once fails spectacularly. She is forced to step in directly to keep Quentin from being expelled. The only plus is that Quentin, Eliot, and Margo are clicking nicely, then Martin does something she has failed to do in over twenty-five attempts. He breaks the wheel.

Mike McCormick is sweet, charming, and handsome. He's everything Eliot could want in a boyfriend, and Martin plays his puppet at just the right moment. By the time Quentin returns from Brakebills South Eliot seems smitten. The sexual tension between Quentin and Alice drives another wedge between the two boys and no one, not even Jane, sees Mike for what he is until Penny is lying in a hospital bed and Martin's puppet has his hands around her throat. Fillory is dying, and now she is too. With her last thoughts, Jane hopes she's done enough, because this chance is Fillory's last.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are like oxygen to a drowning man! I love you guys when you comment. Please point out mistakes if you see them! 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
